Five birds on a branch, 8”x12”.

Sometimes both sides are right. Plastic straws are an environmental menace. Paper straws are useless and stupid. Solution: Drink like a grown-up.

Watching a junco make jerky little head bobs: do larger animals actually make smoother motions, or do we see their small jerky ones in contrast to their scale, as part of broader wholes, and perceive them as graceful — or miss them entirely? Now I’m sitting here trying to find a deep awareness of the way my hand moves toward my coffee mug, which raises another potentially interesting question about the line between meditativeness and stupidity.

Abba Anthony said, ‘A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, “You are mad, you are not like us.”’

–Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Today’s Pennsylvania Dutch word of the day is Gaardengraabfiewer, literally “garden-digging fever.” I don’t have context for it, but I take it to mean that desperate itch, felt too early in the spring, to get out and start working. Honk if this sounds familiar.

At my window feeder this morning: goldfinches, bluebirds, a white-throated sparrow, a brown-headed nuthatch, a robin struggling to stay on the perch, an equally large but more delicate-footed gray mockingbird, and of course the ubiquitous house finches. I will not make some fool claim about a peaceable kingdom, as in fact the house finches are little bullies and the mockingbird took evident pleasure (or am I only projecting?) in driving two of them away. But I did observe that the mockingbird then sat on the power line and watched while the nuthatch enjoyed the space he had opened, so—who knows what they are thinking?

March here and now is neither reliably in like a lion nor out like a lamb, but altogether like a passive-aggressive cat who may just as easily curl up purring on your lap or scratch out your eyes, and there is no knowing which until it happens.

Can’t take any more news? Here’s a coping strategy from Zippy the Pinhead.

I’d been wanting for some time to carve a clock… here it is. The difficulty, for me, was coming up with a design that had the necessary 12-fold symmetry without losing its flow. I think the central medallion works.

The clock works, too, though I wish I’d photographed it at a more aesthetically pleasing time, like a quarter after ten or twenty to four. Oh well. Only 8x8 inches, that being the widest basswood I can get, but the numbers are carved deep enough to read easily from across the room—though raking light helps, as always.

This one went on the wall of my studio (in the transition from “office” to “studio” I realized that with my laptop shut I don’t have a clock visible!) but I have more parts and will get back to carving next week, so will have a couple to sell soon. (It will have to be delivered, for now, as I have not the first idea how I’d ship it. I’m actually not even sure how I’m going to get it safely to shows!)